Alert: Court of Justice clarifies approach to earlier designs (Easy Sanitary Solutions v EUIPO)

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IP analysis: The Court of Justice has dismissed appeals against a decision of the General Court in respect of the validity of a registered Community design for a shower drain. In doing so, it has clarified the approach to be taken to the assessment of the novelty and individual character of a design registration over earlier designs. The Court of Justice held, among other things, that the General Court had erred in law when it required the EUIPO, for the purpose of assessing the novelty of the contested design, to construct the earlier design from the various elements of one or more earlier designs in certain catalogues, even though the applicant for the declaration of invalidity had failed to reproduce in its entirety the design that it claimed to be earlier. It also concluded that the General Court was right to hold, that the ‘sector concerned’ in Article 7(1) of Regulation (EC) 6/2002 (which deals with the disclosure...